


The Fume of Sighs

by Satherene



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Hand Jobs, Mutual Pining, Sex Pollen, curiosity killed the cat (or got him laid), kind of, sexy times that cause complicated feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 07:36:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15262557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Satherene/pseuds/Satherene
Summary: Noctis leans his head back again to see Prompto putting his entire body into opening the vial, scrunching his face up comically. He yanks, and Noctis rolls his eyes, braces for the pop.There's no pop.Instead, there's a booming, thunderous crack, as the cork shoots out of the vial and beams off the ceiling. And whatever's inside explodes out in a brilliant puff of red — directly into Prompto's face.





	The Fume of Sighs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyy, here's this thing that I *had* to write once I got the idea, causing my other fic to get delayed. Hope you enjoy ridiculous boys hooking up and then getting their feelings hurt cause they can't communicate.

_Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs - Shakespeare_

 

\---

Noctis sticks his sword in the ground amongst the scattered mess of fresh saberclaw corpses, leaning against it with heaving breaths. He braces there for a moment, letting it hold his weight as he wipes sweat from his brow, slowly catching his wind.

That was an annoying hunt. More trouble than it was worth, for the gil they're making. He's getting ready to say as much to Prompto when his phone rings.

He grabs it out of his pocket to check. Ignis.

"Hey Specs," he says as he brings the phone up to his ear. "What's up?"

"Did the hunt go smoothly?" asks the accented voice on the other end. "You sound out of breath."

"Just finished up, actually," he says. "No sweat, though, right Prom?"

Prompto's bent over a few feet away, hands on his knees. He wordlessly lifts one hand to give a limp thumbs up.

"You got any leads?" Noctis asks. The group had split up for the day; while he'd stayed around Babost with Prompto to make some extra cash, Ignis and Gladio had gone up to Lestallum to check out rumors of another royal tomb.

"Something that's promising. We'll discuss it at length when we return," Ignis says. "However, we've run a little later than we anticipated, and I'd rather not travel at night. We'll stop at Alkyrie Haven and make the rest of the drive in the morning."

"Cool. Sounds good."

"Don't get in too much trouble," Ignis chides.

"Yeah, I think we can survive one night," Noctis says, eyeing Prompto.

He says his goodbyes and hangs up the phone.

"The guys won't make it back before nightfall, Prom. They're just gonna stay at a haven."

Prompto jumps back to life like he hadn't been utterly wiped out just moments ago.

"Woohoo, sleepover!" he says, eyes lighting up behind sweat-damp bangs. "Do you smell a king's knight marathon, or what?"

Noctis sends his sword back to the armiger, easy smile creeping onto his face as he cracks his knuckles. "Oh, you know it."

\---

From behind Noctis, there's a crack and a thump, followed by a valiant: "Aha!"

"Finally emerged victorious against the formidable kitchen drawer?" Noctis deadpans from his spot flopped down across the caravan couch, not bothering to look away from the King's Knight battle he's currently lost in.

"Another nefarious foe vanquished," Prompto replies gravely from the little kitchen area behind Noctis, and there's the sound of hands rubbing together. "Now — let's see the loot drop."

It's about time for dinner. They've grabbed some cup noodles, and Noctis is all for eating them plain, but his best friend's wanting to get fancy with it, as if he's Gladio or something. He's spent the last five minutes raiding the bare cabinets for any extra spices he can scrounge up.

So far, Prompto only has some suspect cooking oil, an old jar of basil and a near-empty saltshaker to show for it. The drawer he's just wrenched open was a last resort of a losing battle.

"Huh," Prompto says, voice low and inquisitive. "What's this?"

Noctis just cleared his quest, so he leans his head back off the edge of the armrest — peers upside-down at Prompto, who's sitting down by the cabinets.

He's holding a small, dusty vial. Inside is a black liquid of some sort, probably gone off ages ago.

"A sign they need to clean out these campers better," Noctis says. "That thing looks more ancient than Cid."

Prompto's looking at it funny, though.

He takes his time wiping the dust off with the hem of his shirt. Then he holds it back out, and there's suddenly so much more detail.

The vial itself is daintily crafted glass, almost cut like a gem. All cleaned off, it looks like a prop from a Solheim period drama.

And with the light filtering through it now, he can see the liquid isn't black at all — it's a deep jewel-red.

"Hmm, no label." Prompto says, bringing it back down. "But look. There's like, a little flame symbol." He brings it forward so Noctis can get a look at the oddly-intricate little engraving on the front of the vial, dust still settled in the etching. "Maybe it's chili oil?" Prompto questions, an eyebrow raised, and Noctis shrugs in response.

"Don't ask me," he says. Something about it's... strange, though.

Prompto pulls the vial back toward himself, purses his lips in thought. Then he wraps his fingers around the cork, goes to twist — but it doesn't budge. He pulls harder, goes at it like he went at the cabinet drawer. Still nothing.

"Man — it's really jammed in there," he grits out, his entire arm flexing with the action.

"Probably a sign from the Astrals to leave it alone," Noctis says, focusing back on his game. For some reason, he feels weird about the thing. He's kinda hoping Prompto just gives up and puts it back. "Whatever it is, somehow I doubt we wanna cook with it."

" _Dude_ , I gotta know, though," Prompto says. From the corner of his eye Noctis watches him. He switches hands, and then switches back. Then he stands up and tries to leverage it against the counter while he pulls. It doesn't give.

"You're gonna shoot your eye out, y'know," Noct says, tapping a bit harshly on his screen.

"No I'm not," Prompto says. Then he sucks in a sudden breath. "Wait — it totally budged! I almost got it!"

Noctis leans his head back again to see Prompto putting his entire body into it this time, scrunching his face up comically. He yanks, and Noctis rolls his eyes, braces for the pop.

There's no pop.

Instead, there's a booming, thunderous crack, as the cork shoots out of the vial and beams off the ceiling. And whatever's inside explodes out in a brilliant puff of red — directly into Prompto's face.

Noctis flinches — drops his phone. On the other side of the blast, Prompto yelps and stumbles back against the counter, and then doubles over in a harsh coughing fit. And then Noctis can't see him, can't see anything in front of his own face, because that violent flash of red is fading out into a thick pink smoke, and it's blanketing the entire tiny camper.

That's when the smell hits him.

There's a mad scramble. Noctis crashes off the couch in his frenzy to get away; he holds his breath and squints his burning eyes, tripping over Prompto as frantic hands grasp around for the door handle. Prompto finds it first — though not before his elbow finds Noct's face — and he shoves them both out to freedom.

Moments later, they're twenty feet clear of the camper, watching heavy pink fumes roll out the door and wisp away into the evening Cleigne breeze.

 _"What the hell?"_ is all Noctis can think to say, once he's regathered his breath.

He can still smell it, stuck to his clothes, bitter on his tongue — cloying and musty and pungent, like an old bottle of perfume that's gone off. And there's another sharp note to it, something that brings him back to one summer of his childhood, when his careless fooling-around toppled over a cobwebbed stack of red wine in the citadel cellars.

In the present, Prompto's bent over like he was earlier after the hunt, one hand on his knee, the other hand holding his shirt collar up over his nose. Another coughing fit takes him, and Noctis looks at him, then back at the camper, then him again, too dumbstruck for the moment to take any action.

What was that?

Noctis looks distantly around the empty rest area — the souvenir shop's closed for the night, and all the cars are off the road, holing up for the impending nightfall. No one else is around to witness what just happened, and it lends an almost unreal feeling to the situation.

After a few shellshocked moments, Prompto pulls his shirt back down; bleary eyes blink back the tears that track down his face. He coughs another couple of times, then loudly clears his throat.

"Gods, it's so _strong_ ," he says, his voice all thick and strangled, a distant, bewildered look on his face. "What the hell is that shit — garula musk with essence of Titan's ballsack?"

"Definitely not chili oil," Noctis agrees. But other than Prompto's coughing and the awful smell, they seem fine. If it was a poison or a nerve agent or something, they'd probably be convulsing on the ground about now, right? "...Probably a prank thing?" he ventures. "Like a smoke bomb and a stink bomb rolled into one?"

Prompto stares off into the distance. "And I'm the dumb idiot stupid enough to open it. Totally hilarious," he says, and punctuates it with another dry cough. "Ugh," he groans, wiping his eyes on the back of his forearm. "It's like it's still in my lungs."

Noctis frowns. "Hey," he says, taking a step forward, the baffled tone to his voice bleeding into concern. "You okay?"

It's like flipping a switch. Prompto's standing up a little straighter, waving Noct off with a smirk before crossing his arms over his chest, expertly casual. "Nah, it's just gross, is all. I'll survive." A twitch of his lips flashes rueful humor. "I dealt it — guess it's only fair I have to smell it."

After five years of at-the-hip friendship, Noctis thinks he knows Prompto pretty damn well. Enough to recognize that dumb stubborn pride he gets when his weird neurotic brain misreads people's concern as pity. So he fixes him with his best Ignis stare, the one that says: _I know if you're lying, so don't even try._ "Seriously, though," Noctis says. "You don't feel weird or anything?"

"No, Noct, I — I... dude, is your nose bleeding?"

"Hmm?" Noctis says, and Prompto crosses the distance, brow furrowing as he blinks his bloodshot eyes cartoonishly to get a better look.

Noctis brings his hand up under his nose, and sure enough, there's wetness there. And now that his attention's on it, he feels a sharp sting at the back of his sinuses, too.

"Huh, guess so," he says, pulling his hand back to see red coating his fingers. "You kinda threw your elbow in my face on the way out."

Prompto's eyes go wide. "Dude. I am so sorry," he says, scrambling to pull his bandana off his arm. He lifts it up to Noctis' face. "Here —"

There's a sharp spark of static shock where Prompto's fingers brush Noctis' face, jarring in its intensity — Noctis recoils back from the contact.

Prompto yanks his hand away like he touched a hot stove. "Seriously, what's my freaking deal right now!?" he half-yells.

Noctis laughs, grabs the proffered bandana himself. "Yeah, you're kind of a walking disaster at the moment, Prom," he says, holding it under his nose. "But honestly, it's fine. Barely bleeding."

"You know what's better than 'barely bleeding'? Not bleeding." Prompto stares down at his palms, shaking his head with a comical look of horror, as if he killed a thousand innocent people with them. "Dude. My hands have been possessed by the Infernian. I swear, I am not touching anything else for the rest of the night. Not you, not any mystery bottles — I'm not even gonna touch myself!"

Noctis raises an eyebrow.

"I — not like — you know what I mean!" Prompto stammers, flush immediately climbing to his cheeks. Noctis snorts — and quickly remembers that his nose hurts.

The smoke's thinned out into a vague fog, now — they watch it for another minute or two until it fully clears. Then they edge their way back to the camper as if they're treading for landmines, and creep carefully inside.

The smell lingers a little. But honestly, Noctis was expecting worse, given how potent the blast had been. The vial's still laying on the floor of the kitchen area, right where Prompto dropped it.

Prompto reaches for it slowly — picks it up like it might explode all over again if he's not careful. "It's empty," he says, after a stretch of silence.

"Yeah, you think?" Noctis says, spotting his phone on the ground by the couch. He picks it up, swipes it open, and sighs. "Lost my battle."

Prompto slinks by him and slumps down onto the couch. He looks at the vial in his hand and gives a sigh of his own, then he chucks it out the open camper door. "And I lost my desire to spice things up," he says. "Let's just eat?"

Noctis pockets his phone. Then he braces his hands on the arm of the couch, and leans over Prompto with a teasing smirk. "Prom, that's the best idea you've had all day."

Prompto smiles back at him, at first. But then it falters, and an odd look washes over his face. "You go ahead. I need a shower first."

Noctis can't argue with that; whatever that stuff was, Prompto got hit with it point blank.

"Alright," he says, as Prompto gets up and zips toward the cramped caravan bathroom. "Don't take forever, man."


End file.
